Monday, January 08, 2007

Sick days are for the weak. Drag yourself into the library despite any contagious colds, stomach viruses, or flesh eating diseases you may have. As an important information professional, you owe it to your library to be there barring an amputation, decapitation, or death.

Your colleagues and patrons will be so thankful that you came in to save the library that they'll hardly notice the reference desk telephone, public photocopier, and various doorknobs you've contaminated with your sneezes, coughs, and other secretions.

18 comments:

Actually, it should depend on the amputation. For example, if you just lost a hand or arm, you can still operate a computer with one hand and/or shelve books and do other duties. Losing your eyesight, on the other hand, is truly tragic as you can't get much done at work.

What about all those sick patrons at home with a library book? All snuggled in bed with a box of tissue, a cup of tea, and a library book... aaachew! Oops! Sloshed tea on the book, sprayed it with phelgm, and then used a snot filled kleenex for a bookmark.

Money may be the dirtiest thing in the world, but library books are a close second!

Hey romck77, maybe you should be more concerned about being able to read or write like a normal human being. Maybe those uppity ups have sick pay because they don't drag their knuckles on the ground, ever think of that?

I think everyone who works in a library should wear white gloves and face masks all the time. Then it doesn't matter who is or isn't sick within the confines of the library. This also protects everyone from those filthy, germ-ridden patrons who do things to books I don't even want to know about.

Perhaps rubber gloves should additionally be worn under the white gloves and some sort of protective eyewear just in case projectiles somehow make their way into the vicinity of an employee. Then no one has to worry about sick days.

I and the other underlings always wear gloves, to the amusement of patrons ("What, are you mimes or something?") until we turn our hands palm-out and they see how dirty new white gloves can get in an 8-hour shift. The shuddering is worth the jokes.

It's more important to save your sick days for recovering from your binge de jour's. (sp?)BTW, my supervisor tried to wheedle me into coming in to work "just for part of the work day when I was going to be sedated.

We used to have an assistant at my library who wrote an article talking about the health dangers of working in a library - including getting AIDS from books about AIDS... needless to say, no one minded terribly when he was let go.

Duda, wow! I've heard of patrons getting (or complaining about) dirty books from the library, but this is the first I can recall of a librarian talking about the patrons themselves producing dirty books.

The problem with coming in sick in order to stick it to the man (or the uppity-ups) is that "the man" seldom lowers him/herself to associate with hourly workers who have no benefits. So the people you're exposing to the plague du jour are probably people who have nothing to do with the policy and who don't have sick leave, either.

In my library, the incredibly important information professionals who can't miss a day of work (or a week) with the flu all have plenty of sick leave, which they won't use, even though some of us have actively encouraged them to do so, usually on those days when they come in sick.

Ahhh, but I remember the libraries of my youth...books, actually, more so than the denizens who shelved and organized them. I spent hour amongst the shelves, enjoying great selections randomly, or via the cardexes (cardexi?)

Of course, I haven't actually entered a library in over a decade, except that one time several years ago to look for a particular book. It was not familiar to me...some things must pass.